Three years ago, the Muppets were featured on “A Capitol Fourth,” the yearly Independence Day special that airs every July 4th on PBS. In order to promote the special, Kermit the Frog and host Tom Bergeron did a series of satellite interviews with local TV new programs. One of these was an affliate in Omaha, Nebraska, which is about 175 miles, or a 2-3/4 hour drive, south of where I live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota:
In the interview, Kermit mentioned the zoo in Omaha, and I freaked out: “OHMYGOSH! Kermit the Frog just mentioned the name of a place that is relatively close to where I live, and that I’ve actually visited!!!”
These are the scraps that you have to console yourself with when you’re a Muppet fan who lives in South Dakota. Although, there may be an obscure Muppet connection for those of us to live in Sioux Falls: Raven Industries is based here in town; their main thing is the manufacture of balloons and inflatables, including some of the big balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and that sort of thing. I’m not able to verify it now, but I think I remember hearing once that Raven Industries had made the Kermit the Frog balloon that appeared in the parade from 2002-2012. I haven’t been able to confirm it yet, but it’s certainly possible.
Anyway, getting back to Omaha: what really impressed me is not only that Kermit mentioned the Omaha zoo, but he actually called it by its proper name: the Henry Doorly Zoo. I think that was the first time I’d ever heard someone not associated with the zoo call it by its real name; most people just call it “the Omaha zoo,” as I have done all throughout this post.
I asked Steve Whitmire, in a comment on his blog, if he had ever actually been to the zoo in Omaha. He didn’t respond at the time, so I still don’t know, but I am not without hope that he will be able to address it someday.
But anyway, the other reason that I wanted to post this interview is because it’s really a beautiful example of the lovely, fluid, dynamic facial expressions that Steve gives Kermit when he performs him. It really makes Kermit alive and vibrant.
We don’t have footage of five consecutive minutes of Matt Vogel performing simula-Kerm yet, (at least, not through official channels) so I’m not yet able to make a fair comparison, but thus far simula-Kerm’s face seems very static.
I’m also a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and there’s a phrase related to that show that keeps running around in my head. When Bill Corbett took over performing Crow T. Robot from Trace Beaulieu at the beginning of Season 8, he had not done a lot of puppeteering before, and he apologized for the resulting mediocre performance by telling people, “Crow has had a stroke.”
And I’ll just say that, if I didn’t know what was going on with the Muppets and Disney and Steve and the whole thing, if I looked at those videos with Matt performing Kermit without knowing what was going on, I would have said, “What’s the matter with Kermit? It looks like he’s had a stroke.”
I wonder what would have happened if no one had asked Disney about Steve Whitmire’s status with the Muppets.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not making a value judgment either way. But I just wonder what would be different now. Would Steve have started his blog? Would the Vogel!Kermit (henceforward to be known as “simula-Kerm”) video have dropped in July without fanfare?
That’s one thing that’s been gnawing at me all these almost two months, and nobody else seems to think that it is as significant as I do: when the news first broke back in July, Disney promised a “Muppet Thought of the Week” video with Matt Vogel as Kermit the following week. The fact that they claimed to have it cued up and ready to go, and yet didn’t make an announcement regarding the recast until specifically asked about it, implies to me that they intended to just release the simula-Kerm video on the world without comment, to try to sneak it past us and hope that we wouldn’t notice.
It’s frankly insulting. We’re Muppet fans, dammit! We notice tiny details; what makes you think we aren’t going to notice a seismic shift in the Muppet universe? We get pissed off when Fozzie wears the wrong color tie; what makes you think we’re going to let the end of the Second Muppet Era pass by without comment? What have we been doing for the past 27 years but analyzing Kermit’s voice? Of COURSE we were going to notice! We were always going to notice!
Then the whole thing became a bit like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Steve took a Harry Potter-like stand by starting his blog to tell the world the truth of what had gone on at Disney. In response, Disney took a…well, to be fair, a relatively mild Dolores Umbridge-like stance and started trying to discredit Steve in the press. And a sizable chunk of the Muppet fandom started taking an Dumbledore-specific-to-OotP-like stance and started ignoring Steve just when Steve needed them the most. This was a rare miscalculation on Dumbledore’s part, but at least he had good intentions behind it. Perhaps the fans that have turned away from Steve have good intentions as well; history will be the judge. But I digress.
Amidst the fallout from all that, the simula-Kerm video drop was delayed by over a month.
This, I think, was a diabolically clever move by Disney. It gave people the opportunity to get used to the idea of Matt performing Kermit, to convince themselves that even a simulacrum of Kermit is better than no Kermit at all. (On which issue, by the way, I am still undecided.)
If, on the other hand, Disney had released its simula-Kerm video in July with no fanfare, the way it seems to have wanted to in the first place, not only would there have been confusion and uproar, but it would have demonstrated dramatically how little respect Disney has for us Muppet fans: the insult of thinking they could recast Kermit without our noticing or caring, added to the injury of ripping away the soul of our beloved froggy friend.
Then again, maybe it would all have come to the same pass anyway. Forced to do damage control, maybe Disney would have still released their same statement about Steve’s “unacceptable business conduct” and the Hensons’ support of their decision, and maybe the Hensons would have chimed right in on cue with the Steve-bashing, and maybe that same contingent of Muppet fans would have been convinced that they are right.
I don’t fault the guys at ToughPigs or The Muppet Mindset for investigating and publishing their findings; if anything, I wish they had been willing to do more investigating, to use the unique resources available to them to uncover the truth of the matter. In any case, what had seemed initially to have been an embarrassing inconvenience for Disney actually ended up playing right into their hands. Disney, with its Machiavellian efficiency, managed to turn a disadvantage into an advantage.
On the other hand, it also led to Steve starting his Muppet Pundit blog, which has become a joy and a blessing in my life, so I’m grateful for that. Nothing is so evil that good cannot come out of it, one way or another.
“I am the culmination of one man’s dream. This is not ego or vanity, but when Doctor Soong created me, he added to the substance of the universe. If, by your experiments, I am destroyed, something unique – something wonderful – will be lost. I cannot permit that. I must protect his dream.“ –Lt. Commander Data, “The Measure of a Man,” Star Trek: The Next Generation (Melinda Snodgrass, screenwriter)
Star Trek: The Next Generation is my favorite Star Trek series, and “The Measure of a Man” is my favorite TNG episode.
If you’re not familiar, here is a very good 10-minute synopsis of the episode that hits all the important points:
The episode is so resonant and so relevant and so applicable to so many real-life issues as we continue to have debates about human rights with regard to torture, immigration, racism, GLBT issues, etc.
I don’t want to diminish in any way its applicability to the biggest and most fundamental issues that we face as a society, but I realized yesterday, as I was pulling the quotation for that other post, that it can be applied as an analogy to the Schism as well.
In this analogy, Kermit is Data–unable to assert his own rights and being treated like a commodity rather than an entity. Captain Picard comes to Data’s defense just as Steve comes to Kermit’s defense, so Steve is Captain Picard. There is also a case to be made that Steve is analogous to Data since Steve is “on trial,” after a fashion, in the court of public opinion, but since Kermit is a puppet who relies on a puppeteer for his life, that still kind of works.
In the episode, the villain is Commander Maddox, who wants to put Data through a dangerous and unnecessary diagnostic procedure to achieve his own ends–which, to be fair, are somewhat noble: advancing knowledge in the field of cybernetics. In the Schism, the villain is Disney, which views Kermit as a commodity and will get rid of anyone who attempts to get in the way of their profit margin. Therefore, Disney is the analogue to Commander Maddox, although Commander Maddox is arguably more noble when all is said and done.
The Henson children (collectively) are Admiral Nakamura, in that Admiral Nakamura supports Maddox just as the Hensons went along with Disney in its smear campaign against Steve. Admiral Nakamura’s involvement in this episode is minor, appearing only in the first 15 minutes or so, and the Hensons should have limited their involvement in the Schism as well. If I were to compare the Hensons to someone not appearing in this episode, I would compare them to Norah Satie, whom we meet two seasons later in “The Drumhead.”
Ultimately, it is Guinan (played by Whoopi Goldberg) who gives Captain Picard the inspiration he needs to see the big picture, to make the most compelling argument possible and win the case. We’re getting into a whole weird metaphysical area here, but I would say that Jim Henson is Guinan in this analogy.
Perhaps most interestingly, I would argue that Matt Vogel is Commander Riker in this scenario, forced to prosecute the case against his friend Data due to a lack of legal staff at the starbase. At first he refuses outright:
LOUVOIS: And the unenviable task of prosecuting this case would fall on you, Commander, as the next most senior officer of the defendant’s ship.“ RIKER: “I can’t! I…I won’t! Data’s my comrade. We have served together. I not only respect him, I consider him my friend!“
But when Louvois tells him that she will rule summarily against Data if Riker does not prosecute the case, Riker reluctantly agrees, and does his duty with regard to presenting the most damaging case against Data that he can possibly come up with, even though we, in the audience, can see that it is tearing him up inside.
And what of Louvois, the Starfleet JAG officer tasked with trying the case? I would say that the Muppet fans (collectively) are Louvois. I don’t know, though. Louvois eventually comes around, but it remains to be seen whether the fans will.
But what is perhaps the most interesting of all to me: Look back up at that quote with which I opened this post. Sub in the words “Jim Henson” for “Dr. Soong,” and it sounds like something that Kermit and Steve would say together, seamlessly blending into one another. It’s not something that Kermit would say, or something that Steve would say; but it’s something that they would both say together, as one, with no division between them, so that you can’t tell where Kermit ends and Steve begins, or vice versa.
(Incidentally, I bet Andy Serkis gets called a “voice actor” a lot too. Sad!)
“How many of you are parents? If you are, then in all likelihood, you view your children as your most important ‘creations’, your ultimate concern, your life’s work. It doesn’t matter how old they get, or if they are adopted, you’re still going to do all that you can to protect them forever, to give them a safe place to grow and be themselves. That’s how I view the Muppets.” –Steve Whitmire, “Acceptance, Fear & Hope” (August 1, 2017)
Even for those of us who aren’t parents, this lovely analogy from Steve offers us a lot of insight as to why he feels the way he does, why he’s made the choices that he has, and why he refuses to stop fighting. Therefore, I think that it is worthwhile to dig into it a little, to try to unpack it and see what new understanding we can uncover.
Potentially the most damning allegation against Steve in this whole smear campaign is the claim that he “blackballed” puppeteers that auditioned with Disney when Disney wanted to cast multiple performers for singular Muppet characters. Steve has addressed the issue on his blog and made it clear that, while he has been outspoken about character integrity and was one of the loudest critics of the “multicasting” initiative, he never had any authority when it comes to Disney’s hiring decisions…which makes sense, when you think about it, because if he did have that kind of power and authority, wouldn’t he have been able to, I don’t know…un-fire himself?
Nevertheless, it’s an idea that has gained some traction, and the people who want to discredit Steve just love to paint a lurid picture of Big Mean Stevie, throwing his weight around and acting too big for his britches, callously crushing the hopes of the innocent little puppeteers who dared to dream of working with the Muppets. It’s an idea that’s so insidious, it has even planted some seeds of doubt in the minds of some of Steve’s staunchest supporters.
To be perfectly clear: I do NOT give any credence to these allegations of Steve blackballing fellow puppeteers. But even if some inconvertible evidence were to come to light proving that he did so, I can see how he would feel justified in doing so. When viewed through the prism of this parent/child metaphor, the alleged behavior that has been characterized as “blackballing” theoretically seems like a reasonable and responsible reaction.
Consider this scenario: let’s say that you are married with one or more children (if–like me–you are not, then just pretend). And let us further assume that your in-laws are the interfering type, and so they get it into their heads to hire a babysitter for your kids–without your knowledge or consent. So all of a sudden the doorbell rings and there’s the babysitter that your in-laws hired standing on the doorstep saying, “Hi, I’m here to take care of your kids!” Would you welcome this babysitter into your home? Would you entrust him or her with the care of your children?
Of course you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t leave your children in the care of a total stranger. Instead, you would ask the prospective babysitter to leave. And it wouldn’t be a reflection on the babysitter herself (or himself); for all you know, the babysitter could be qualified and competent. But you wouldn’t know, because you wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to vet the babysitter yourself. To entrust the care of your children, in your home, to an untested stranger would be irresponsible parenting, if not outright negligence.
And if you are a nice person (and I assume that you probably are) you might well feel sorry for the babysitter, who was led to believe that he/she had a job lined up, only to have it fall through at the last minute, by no fault of his/her own, because someone who was not the parent of the child(ren) overstepped their boundaries.* Still, in that case it would be the in-laws who misled the babysitter, made the babysitter promises that they couldn’t keep. You couldn’t take the responsibility for their inappropriate actions. And you certainly couldn’t potentially endanger the well-being of your children, and the sanctity of your home, just to spare the babysitter’s feelings.
Just to be perfectly clear, in the preceding analogy, Steve is the parent, the Muppets are the children, Disney/Muppets Studio are the meddling grandparents, and the aspiring puppeteers are the prospective babysitter. The aspiring puppeteers may have felt ill-treated, and it is appropriate to feel sorry for them, but let us just keep in mind that it was Disney that falsely raised their expectations and made them promises that it couldn’t–or, at least, didn’t–keep.
At this point, I’d just like to restate Steve’s thesis statement, putting it into my own words as I understand it: Steve sees his responsibility to the Muppets as being comparable to that of a parent to his children, and even if some of his “children”–for example, Kermit and Beaker–are “adopted,” that doesn’t lessen his love and concern for them, and it certainly doesn’t lessen the responsibility that he feels toward them.
If that’s the case, then when Steve got the call from Disney last October saying that his puppeteering services would no longer be required, I imagine that it must have felt similar to being a parent and having Social Services just show up at your door one day–with no advance notice or warning, mind you–and announce that they had arrived to take your kids away.**
Imagine that you were a parent in that scenario. Would you just give up? Let it go? Move on with your life? Of course you wouldn’t! You would speak up. You would fight back against the injustice of it. You would do everything you could think of to get your kids back, no matter what the cost. Even if it were hopeless, you would have to explore every legal avenue and try everything that you possibly could…because you would know that if you didn’t, you would never be able to look yourself in the mirror again, and you would spend the rest of your life wondering if there was more that you could have done. Most of all, you would do it because you would know that your children would be counting on you to do the best that you could for their sake.
Moreover, if you didn’t try–if you didn’t make an effort–if you just passively accepted the decision, wouldn’t that only go to support the original argument that you were an unfit parent, because you apparently didn’t care enough to fight back?
Now, instead of imagining that you’re the parent, imagine instead that you are acquainted with a parent in this situation. And let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you believe the allegations to be true, that you believe that the parent is unfit. Would you say so to his face? Would you tell him to give it up, let it go, move on with his life, stop digging himself in deeper? Would you tell him that the kids are probably better off, and that he’s only hurting himself by prolonging the inevitable?
Assuming, as I have already done, that you are a nice person, I don’t think you would do any of those things. Even if you believed those things, it would be unnecessarily cruel to say them to his face.
Would you talk about the beleaguered parent behind his back? Would you post messages about him on a public Internet forum that, for all you know, he could very well be reading? Would it make a difference if you knew, or suspected, that he was reading it? That’s a trickier thing to answer; it’s a lot less cut-and-dried.
As Muppet fans, I think we should be discussing this issue. As I’ve said before, I started this blog in the interest of keeping the conversation going, to promote a dialogue in the interest of fostering understanding, rather than trying to sweep it under the rug. Because, as my beloved Phil Dunphy points out on Modern Family, in that scenario, eventually you end up with a lumpy rug.
(“It becomes a tripping hazard…”)
But at the same time, I think it is important to remember, first of all, that Steve is a part of our community; second–and most importantly–he is also a human being with feelings. As a rule, I would never say or write or post anything about Steve that I would be ashamed to say to his face. You never know what he might be reading, and when.
And by the way, that policy of not posting anything online that I wouldn’t say to Steve’s face goes for all the other players in this sad little drama as well. Disney presents itself to the public as a monolith, and so that is how I treat it, but I do try to be mindful of the Hensons as human beings and try to be sensitive about their feelings with regards to their father and the pain they must still feel over losing him. Nevertheless, I’m not going to afford them any special privileges on that account; I’m not going to hold back on calling them out on their hypocrisy in this matter just because they are Jim’s children. Some people may think that I’ve been overly harsh or critical in that regard, but I stand by every syllable that I’ve put out there in regard to the Hensons. They shouldn’t dish it out if they can’t take it.
If I regret anything that I’ve said about anyone in this scenario, it’s what I said about Matt Vogel after his Kermit video dropped. In this whole extended metaphor of parents/children, I view Matt’s role as that of a “foster parent,” taking care of Kermit for an undetermined period of time in the hopes that his “adoptive father” (Steve) will someday be allowed by “Social Services” (Disney) to take custody of Kermit and his other “children” (Beaker, Rizzo, etc.) once again.
Ideally, that’s the goal of the foster care system. In reality, of course, it rarely works out so neatly, and it seems unlikely to do so in this scenario either. Especially since Disney, the analogue to Social Services in this scenario, is more like Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford from Sweeney Todd than a modern-day social worker.
To those outside the Muppet fan community, and perhaps even to a few within it, it may seem overly precious or self-indulgent for a puppeteer to regard his characters as his “children.” But Steve’s not the only one who has said something to that effect. No less a personage than Mr. Caroll Spinney, performer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street, has said on more than one occasion that he regards Big Bird as his child.
The documentary about Mr. Spinney, I Am Big Bird, tells a story about when the Big Bird puppet was vandalized. The Sesame cast was on tour, they were rehearsing on a college campus and had the local ROTC contingent guard the unoccupied Big Bird puppet while they went out to lunch. Whether the ROTC students were temporarily possessed by some destructive demon or they were just horrible people at baseline, I don’t know, but apparently they thought it would be neat to have some of Big Bird’s feathers as souvenirs. And then, what might have seemed at first like a harmless prank escalated into something like a scene from Lord of the Flies. They plucked one side of Big Bird bare, they tried to remove one of his eyes and, when they couldn’t do that, they left it “broken and hanging off.” Then they apparently got bored of the brutality and left him lying on the ground.
Mr. Spinney describes the aftermath thus: “[Big Bird] was lying in the dirt, and I saw it and I burst into tears. It was like seeing my child raped and thrown on the ground and destroyed.”
I think most feeling people, if they have any sort of connection to Sesame Street at all, would have been moved by the gruesomeness of this senseless brutality against Big Bird. But as I have argued elsewhere, Kermit the Frog has recently suffered an act of cruelty and violation at the hands of Disney that is just as senseless and just as brutal. However, since it involves injuries to the soul of the character instead of to the outward, physical manifestation of the character, I think it is harder for people to understand or to take as seriously as the concrete, observable reality of a vandalized puppet.
Let’s go back to our extended metaphor and carry it to the other logical extreme: Have any of you ever had an elderly loved one suffer from dementia? If you have, then you know how painful it is to watch as someone you love slowly loses himself (or herself) and everything that makes them who they are. You know how disturbing it is to look into their eyes and see a stranger looking back at you.
That’s sort of how I view Kermit now, as someone that I love suffering from sudden-onset dementia. Just like that, all of Kermit’s memories of the Muppet Show days, and especially his memories of working with Jim, are all second-hand. Not only that, but his memories of everything that happened before the Muppet Show are now third-hand.
And at the risk of sounding like a scratched CD or a poorly buffered audio file (which I imagine are the 21st-century equivalents of a “broken record”), this is not, in any way, a criticism of Matt. I’m sure Matt is well versed in Muppet lore at baseline and will do his due diligence to keep Kermit conversant in his own history. Nevertheless, I fear that now, as Data says in the very best episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, those memories will be “reduced to the mere facts of the events. The substance, the flavor of the moment, could be lost.”
The attitude that really infuriates me from other fans is the idea that Steve is somehow being selfish or self-serving by wanting to regain custody of his Muppet “children.” To go back to the metaphor, any parent would try to get their kids back if they were taken away…and granted, some of them might do so for selfish reasons, but the overwhelming majority would do so out of concern for their children and a wish to protect them.
Furthermore, if trying to exert authority as to how Kermit is handled by Disney makes one selfish, then Jim Henson–according to that logic–was the most selfish bastard ever to come down the pike. Because, in the days of the original Disney deal, Jim wanted Kermit to have a separate, privileged status from the other Muppet characters. As told by Brian Jay Jones in The Biography:
“While Jim was prepared to hand over all of the Muppets to Disney, he didn’t intend for Kermit to go with them unconditionally. He was too important. ‘Kermit should be treated in the negotiations as a separate issue,’ recommended a confidential Henson Associates memo. ‘Since Kermit the Frog is so closely associated with Jim Henson, Jim must have control over the use of Kermit.’ For Disney, however, getting the Muppets without the free use of Kermit was like getting the cast of Peanuts without Snoopy. For the moment, Kermit was in a kind of legal limbo as both sides tried to figure out, Solomon-like, how to split the million-dollar baby.” (page 446, emphasis in original)
No one would admit to it now, of course, because nobody wants to speak ill of the dead, but I’d be willing to bet that some of the people working on the Disney side of the deal thought that Jim was making “outrageous demands” and being “difficult to work with.”
It’s clear from Jane Henson’s words in 1990 that Jim intended Steve to be Kermit’s “guardian” in the event that something happened to him. And regardless of what Brian Henson thinks about it now, he’s the one who appointed Steve as Kermit’s guardian after Jim passed away. Based on what little evidence that Disney has offered as to Steve’s alleged “unfitness,” it looks to me that Steve was fired for doing exactly what Jim Henson intended and expected him to do: not only to keep Kermit alive, but to care for him and protect him, as any parent or guardian would.
____________________________ *This actually happened to me once when I was about 12 or 13. It’s a long story, as so many of my stories seem to be. **”Like in The Sims,” I was going to say, but even in the Sims games, they usually give you one warning before the social worker comes.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate one of the most upbeat and positive Fraggle songs that there is (which is saying something):
The irony here, of course, is that the Doozers actually are NOT seeing eye-to-eye with one another and are not communicating.
There seems to be a lot of that going around.
We haven’t been doing a very good job of seeing eye-to-eye in the Muppet fan community lately. I don’t exempt myself from that; I haven’t exactly been my best self the last few days.
I’ve been venting a lot of frustrations lately, and while that’s therapeutic, it’s not necessarily very friendly or congenial. It’s important to me to be straightforward in expressing my point of view. I won’t apologize for my loyalty to Steve, but maybe I could make more of an effort to be more diplomatic and less antagonistic. That might be more rhetorically effective.
I think that it’s important for me to say that I don’t fault anyone for making a conscientious decision. Wherever you stand on the Schism, if you’re there because you believe with all your heart and mind and soul and every fiber of your being that that is where you’re supposed to be, then I respect that. The best that any of us can do is to obey the inscrutable exhortations of our souls.
With that said, however, I think it might be a useful thought experiment if we were each to think about how we would justify ourselves and our position on the issue to Jim Henson if we had to…if we could.
I’ll have to think about that; there might be a future post in that.
“Every whisper Of every waking hour I’m Choosing my confessions […] Like a hurt, lost, and blinded fool– Oh no, I’ve said too much.” –R.E.M “Losing My Religion”
I look at what I posted yesterday, and I cringe. The jokes that I made were intended to be jabs at the absurd situation in which we find ourselves, but reading them today, they look like nothing so much as mean-spirited digs at Matt Vogel, which was not my intention at all. Frankly, I’m ashamed of myself; I usually make a point of thinking about the words I use before I use them, specifically what effect they might have on the feelings of others. Yesterday, I just went for the punchline. I was angry and upset myself, but that’s no excuse.
Regardless of what I said in my annoyance and frustration, I do have sympathy for Matt. I might even have empathy for him, but to explore that, I would have to break a good-faith agreement–or at least come close to breaking it–that I made eleven years ago, and I’m not prepared to do that.
There is one–and only one–sentence that Steve Whitmire has written on his blog with which I take issue. And actually, it is not even a complete sentence: “I am having trouble understanding his [Matt’s] support of the recast…” To be clear, I am sure that Steve intended no disrespect, which is pretty clear from the context. Nevertheless, I don’t think it is fair to say that Matt “supports” the recast. Based on my own past experience, I think that it is one thing to go along and try make the best of a bad situation, and it’s quite another thing to “support” the bad situation. One could consider it tacit approval to go along without resisting, and maybe it is, but I’m not qualified to throw stones at anyone in that regard.
But the important thing to remember is that this is not a matter of “Steve versus Matt,” or vice versa. The people who claim otherwise are trying to create a false dilemma, to distract from the real issue of Disney’s ambivalence toward the Muppets; to say nothing of Disney’s complete and utter disregard for the people who work for them, who are viewed as disposable, tradeable, negotiable commodities rather than human beings.
Let us not forget that Disney is the author of all our problems. If they hadn’t decided to muck things up, we’d have Steve performing Kermit, Matt performing Jerry’s characters, everyone would be right where they belong, and all the Muppet fandom would be perfectly happy about it.
Well…Disney finally released the Muppet Thought of the Week video with Vogel!Kermit. You can watch it here:
Oops! Sorry, wrong video! This is the one:
But seriously, I think Matt is great…as Uncle Deadly. His Kermit, though…sheesh.
Okay, that sounds harsh. I’m sorry. I usually don’t go for the joke at the potential expense of other people’s feelings like that. I’m just feeling bitter and, well, it was right there.
But I certainly mean no disrespect toward Matt. He’s not the one I have a problem with…
…(but part of me is hoping that he’s purposely trying to be terrible as Kermit so that Disney will bring Steve back. I’m not proud of myself for hoping that, but there it is.)
I said at the beginning that if Disney insisted on this course of action and refused to be dissuaded, Matt was an excellent candidate to play Kermit because of his talent and his ethos.
But having actually heard Matt do it…I’m sure it’s NOT something that he’s doing on purpose, but Matt’s Kermit sounds too much like Constantine.
HOW CAN I TRUST A KERMIT THAT SOUNDS LIKE CONSTANTINE?!?!?!?!?
If I may paraphrase my thesis statement from my review of the first episode of the muppets. (2015), this video made me want to cry…and NOT in a good way.
And I reiterate again, this is nothing against Matt. But just as a Doozer can’t become a Fraggle, Matt cannot become Steve. It’s not a bad thing, and it’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the immutable laws of nature; they’re there for a reason. And I have my doubts as to whether a Constantine can become a Kermit…but, in fairness, I suppose it is a little soon to judge.
I remember when Muppet Christmas Carol was about to come out back in 1992. I was talking to my eldest brother about it, and he said that he couldn’t bear to watch it because, regardless of how close the voice was, he would just know that it wasn’t Jim Henson performing Kermit. And I don’t think that that was supposed to be a slight against, or a criticism of, Steve in any way (I’m not entirely sure that my brother knew specifically that it would be Steve performing him–I certainly didn’t); I just think that the wound was still too fresh.
At the time, I rather thought that my brother was cutting off his nose to spite his face in regards to the Muppets. Just because Kermit was different doesn’t mean he would be bad, and my brother might have been missing out on something great.
But now…I kind of get where my brother was coming from. I don’t know–I sincerely don’t know–if I’ll ever be able to bring myself to watch new Muppet stuff ever again. And I reiterate, yet again, that it is nothing in the world against Matt; if it be so that he is not purposely trying to be bad, I am sure he will get better over time, just as Steve did. But it’s something that he should never have been asked to do in the first place–certainly not under these circumstances.
At the risk of sounding like Sarah in Labyrinth, it’s just not fair. It’s not fair to Steve, to Matt, to Jim, to Kermit, the other Muppet performers, or to us fans. The whole thing is just so contrived, so corporate…so artificial, so unnecessary…so WRONG!!!
I’m sick of trying to be diplomatic about this; this whole thing is WRONG! It is WRONG to casually and cavalierly sever Kermit’s connection to Jim like this. It is WRONG to rip Kermit’s soul away from him!
I’d like to believe that the ideal spirit of Kermit exists somewhere on the platonic plane, so that he will continue to live no matter who’s performing him…but I’m not sure I believe that anymore. If this had been a necessary course of action, and if Steve had been allowed input into the decision, then maybe the spirit of Kermit could continue to flow on through Matt (or whomever Steve had chosen) and into the puppet. But maybe the circumstances have to be exactly right; maybe it can’t happen when the decision is made arbitrarily under false pretenses.
Neither Constantine nor Matt Vogel can give me what I want: I want Steve back as Kermit. Only Disney can give me what I want, but I don’t believe their promises are any more sincere than Constantine’s are.
“Skenfrith needs our help. You see, we’ve gotta believe he’s not a monster […] He hates being a monster; only we can help!” –Wembley Fraggle
I recently read a post by my friend Marni Hill on her blog, Just for the Halibut. (Fair warning: her post contains explicit language, but if that’s not an issue, you can read it here.) In it, she described feeling skeptical and working through lingering doubts she still had about Steve Whitmire as a result of the nasty rumors and snide insinuations that have swarmed unpleasantly around him. It was a challenging piece, and I had difficulty processing it. As I was thinking about how to respond, I was suddenly put in mind of an old saying, regarded as something of a cliché, if not an outright glurge: “Believing is seeing.”
It made me smile. It reminded me of my best friend from college, who hated that expression and wasn’t shy about saying so. (Truth be told, I’ve never known him to be shy about saying so when he didn’t like something.) I’m not necessarily inclined to agree with him, however; I think there’s some truth in the saying.
Then that put me in mind of the Fraggle Rock episode “Believe It or Not,” which introduced us to Skenfrith, a magical shapeshifting creature whose form changes as a reflection of the beliefs of those around him. To put it another way, he becomes whatever others believe him to be. It’s kind of a complicated concept; why I don’t I just let Skenfrith himself explain it:
When Jocelyn Stevenson created the character of Skenfrith for Fraggle Rock, she was trying to make the point that “belief affects perception [and] perception affects belief […] what you believe about things is then how you see them.”
And whether we’re aware of it or not, our beliefs about other people also affect our perception of them. For example, I recently read a fascinating article about how preconceived notions about another person’s emotional state can influence how we interpret their facial expressions. Not only that, but as we interpret the facial expressions of others, we subconsciously reflect the emotions that we are interpreting on our own faces. So, in a way, we’re all kind of reverse Skenfriths.
As I was thinking about all this, I was suddenly hit with another epiphany: What if Steve Whitmire is Skenfrith?
Not literally, of course. I’m well aware that Dave Goelz played Skenfrith on Fraggle Rock, (and, as far as I know, Steve is not a shapeshifter). But in a metaphorical sense, suppose that Steve is Skenfrith, and suppose that Disney and the Henson children are the Gorgs who–with a depth of malice only rarely plumbed by the actual Gorgs themselves–have gone out of their way to convince the Muppet fandom that Steve is a monster: a disrespectful, unacceptable-business conducting, outrageously demanding, understudy-eschewing, blackballing, destructive-energy emitting, brinkman-shipping, bitter, angry, depressed, unfunny monster.
I’ve now come realize that, for the fans who have been convinced of Steve’s multihyphenate monstrosity, everything that he says and does to try to justify himself gets filtered through that perception, like a funhouse mirror that twists and distorts the reflected image, so that the things that he says in his own defense are perceived as reinforcing Disney’s claims instead, and he is perceived as some sort of unhinged, bullying diva when, really, all he’s trying to do is stand up for himself.
And while I am dismayed and frustrated by this…*ahem*…phenomenon, at least now I understand how Steve can post fundamental Muppet truths on his blog–stuff that I consider to be really basic, like “the Muppet performers arenot interchangeable“–and be met with eye-rolling contempt by certain factions of the fandom. While I don’t agree with the people who say things like, “Steve should have taken the ‘retirement package’ from Disney…he’s so disrespectful of Matt…he’s just digging himself in a hole…who does he think he is anyway to dictate what’s best for the Muppets?…” etc., at least now I understand where those comments are coming from. To me, it’s similar to what Red says in “Believe It or Not”: “I know that [Skenfrith’s not a monster]…but I found the two heads very convincing!”
One of my favorite authors is Madeleine L’Engle. Best known for writing A Wrinkle in Time, she was a prolific and eclectic author. There’s an idea that shows up in several of her works, but is perhaps best expressed in her novel The Young Unicorns: “People become trustworthy only by being trusted […] Not stupidly, you understand, but fully aware of the facts, we still have to trust.”
Notice that she doesn’t say that we have to be aware of all the facts. That would be ideal, of course, but oftentimes in situations like this, facts can only take us so far. And when it gets to that point, that’s when we have to make a choice whether or not to make a leap of faith in trusting someone. That’s a difficult, dangerous thing to do; to trust someone else is to make oneself vulnerable, to risk being hurt. It’s much easier and safer to sit back, to be passive, to accept what those in authority tell us. But the easiest choice isn’t necessarily the right one; in fact, in my experience, it’s more often the opposite.
It is now incumbent upon each of us Muppet fans to make a choice: Are we going to make Steve trustworthy by trusting him? Or are we going to make him into a monster by making him out to be a monster?
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
I have empathy for Steve Whitmire. Let me tell you why:
During my brief, undistinguished teaching career, there were two separate occasions in which students misrepresented things that I said, took well-intentioned statements that I’d made and blew them all out of proportion. I wrote about it last week, but because it was lengthy and not strictly Muppet related, I put it on a separate page.
One thing that I didn’t put in that story is that during the first year of my teaching assistantship in grad school, I had a student who was clearly guilty of plagiarism. It was a dead giveaway when the paper used the wrong documentation style, because we only taught MLA in Comp 101, and this paper used APA documentation. When I had to confront the student about it, the director of writing backed me up all the way. Because of that, I felt that he was on my side, that we were all on the same team, that I could count on him to support me. I don’t know exactly what changed over that summer between the first and second years of my teaching assistantship. I hadn’t changed in my approach to school or to life; I was still working to juggle the demands of being a teacher and a student at the same time, but always trying to conduct myself with integrity and stay true to my own personal ethos. In the past, that had always been enough…but apparently it wasn’t anymore.
Two different students, on two separate occasions, bore false witness against me, dragging my name through the mud. But I think it’s important to think about their motivations. I think that the college student, in her panic at the prospect of potentially failing a required class, in her heightened state of emotion, exaggerated the event in her mind. I think that she believed that she was being honest, that she told the events exactly as she remembered them, even though her version was grossly inaccurate. I bear her no ill will.
Perhaps the high school student believed that she was being honest too, but she had nothing to gain by rehashing the story over and over again except for the satisfaction of provoking my righteous indignation. It wasn’t that she cared about the substitute teacher, either. She was motivated purely by the thrill of causing a sensation, by the pleasure of inflicting pain.
Basically, she was trolling me. She was a real-life, flesh-and-blood, in-your-face troll. And now that I think about it, in a way I have to admire that, albeit grudgingly. At least she had the courage to stand up and say those things right to my face, instead of hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet and harassing me from behind an assumed name and a bunch of virtual sockpuppets, like a coward.
Therefore, I know how it feels to have people saying things about me that are exaggerated at best and, at worst, are outright lies. I know how frustrating it is to feel powerless to defend yourself from people (a) bearing false witness against you, and/or (b) outright verbally attacking you.
“A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.” –A quotation that has been falsely attributed to Mark Twain, ironically enough. (Still relevant, however)
That’s why I empathize with Steve. And why I stand with him.
“Mercury revolves around our mutual parent sun in such a way that one face is always turned toward the sun and is brilliantly lit and burningly hot; and the other side is always turned toward the cold dark of interstellar space. But Mercury oscillates slightly on its axis, and thereby sunside and nightside are integrated by a temperate zone which knows both heat and cold, light and dark. So the two disparate sides of Mercury are not separated by a chasm; the temperate zone mediates […] thereby making wholeness instead of brokenness.” –Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season
I see this as a theme in a lot of Jim Henson’s work; the disparate halves of light and dark, warm and cold, inward vision and outward vision. And while I don’t claim to know what he thought and felt about things–while I always have to be very careful not to assume that I know–the fact that the theme showed up as often as it did in his work implies that he thought a lot about it, and perhaps he struggled to find that temperate zone between dayside and nightside.
On Fraggle Rock, Jim played two different characters: Cantus and Convincing John–or, as I call them, the sage and the showman. I think that each represented a different facet of his personality.
(As an aside, I’m always amused by the fact that Convincing John’s baloobius, i.e. the tuft of fur at the end of his tail, doesn’t match the color of the hair on his head. The implication being that he dyes his hair. I think that’s hilarious.)
When you watch Jim Henson in interviews–particularly when he doesn’t have a puppet in his hands–he always seems very gentle and soft-spoken and often somewhat ill at ease, with a simultaneously endearing and infuriating habit of putting his hands up by his mouth, often muffling his words somewhat. In interviews, I find Jim to be very much the sage; for example, here’s an interview in which he makes some very farsighted predictions about the future of television technology. This interview is also interesting because you can see the difference between the way that Jim casually chats and laughs a bit with the people in the room before the interview starts (and after it ends) with his more calm and serious demeanor during the interview itself.
But he could also be a showman. There was a pitch reel–which, unfortunately, I can no longer find–for an early iteration of The Jim Henson Hour wherein Jim himself gets up and gives a pitch for this kooky TV show he wants to make, with a rotating schedule of content. From what I remember of it, he seemed much more comfortable in front of the camera (perhaps because he was working from a script and not answering questions extemporaneously); he assumed something of the energy, the gestures, and the vocal tone of the carnival barker, and his hands never went anywhere near his mouth. It’s a completely different attitude from that which he has in interviews. So, which is the “real” Jim Henson–the showman or the sage?
Well, that’s the thing–they’re both real. Or, in a sense, neither is real because a human being is more than the sum of his multiple facets.
There are other examples of this duality in Jim Henson’s work–Bert and Ernie come to mind–but perhaps the most dramatic example is the Skeksis and the Mystics (or urRu) in The Dark Crystal.
(WARNING: Thirty-five-year-old spoilers ahead.)
The first time I ever saw The Dark Crystal was fairly recently, within the last five years or so. I was completely blown away by it. At first the story seems like a rather familiar story of good versus evil. We have our protagonist Jen who–like Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter–is a lonely young orphan, fostered by the gentle urRu after his parents were killed, with a special destiny to go on a quest and defeat evil by finding a MacGuffin, in this case the crystal shard with which he is to heal the eponymous Dark Crystal, by which the Skeksis will apparently be vanquished.
Ah, but then Jim Henson throws us a curveball: it turns out that the Skeksis and the urRu are actually the same creatures, unnaturally split apart when the Crystal was broken, and when Jen heals the Crystal at the time of the Great Conjunction of the three suns, he sets off a chain reaction that reintegrates the two divided halves–Skeksis and urRu–back into their singular selves; the glorious UrSkeks.
This is not a straightforward story about good and evil after all. The Skeksis and the urRu need each other. One cannot live without the other. Without the Skeksis, the urRu lack agency. Without the urRu, the Skeksis lack moral fiber. It’s not that the Skeksis are evil and the urRu are good. The real evil is the division between them.
This is an old idea–dating at least as far back as Plato–with far-reaching social, political, historical, etc. implications around the world–but it’s applicable to the situation that we, as Muppet fans, are in now with regard to the Schism between Disney and Steve Whitmire.
It is not, as one faction might argue, that Kermit is good but Steve is evil. Nor is it, as another faction might argue, that Steve is good but Disney is evil. It is not that one faction of Muppet fans are good and any and all other factions are evil. But in each case, whenever we stop cooperating and start competing, whenever we start believing that some people’s contributions are not necessary or not important, whenever we start thinking, “I am right; therefore, anyone who disagrees with me is automatically wrong”…those are the things that divide us, and it is the division itself that is inherently evil. As Dumbledore says at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: “We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.”
So how do we bridge the chasm between sunside and nightside? How do we find the temperate zone that moderates the two? How do we move from brokenness to wholeness without subordinating one side or the other?
The reason I started this blog is because I think it is imperative to keep the conversation going in a civilized way; to firmly but gently probe and palpate the bruises, the open wounds, and the recently formed scar tissue–not with the object of causing more pain but with the goal of diagnosing and treating the wounds that this Schism has caused.
At the same time, I think it is equally imperative to respect and validate opinions with which we disagree. All too often–not only as Muppet fans, but as human beings–we fall into the trap of thinking, “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.” We assume that the dissenter must necessarily be wrong. We equate “having a different opinion” with “having a bias.” We regard anyone who disagrees with us as an evil enemy. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, by the way.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to see things from another point of view without losing your own, and it is possible to recognize a valid viewpoint while still disagreeing with it. The more we are able to have a respectful dialogue, and try to see things from another point of view, the closer we can move toward a consensus.
If there’s one thing that I have in common with Jim Henson, it’s that I’m averse to conflict of any kind. And speaking strictly for myself, the reason why I’m conflict-averse is that I’m terrified of losing my temper. I’ve always seen myself as something akin to Jekyll and Hyde, or the Incredible Hulk; when I get angry, it’s as though I turn into a completely different person, and I’m terrified of what I might say and whom I might hurt while in that angered state. And I do work on trying to integrate the light and dark sides, and to channel whatever anger I feel constructively–to turn a negative into a positive–but it’s a constant struggle.
That’s why I prefer to write a blog, so I have the chance to rethink and revise my words before they are published, and also, so that I don’t come across as spamming other blogs and forums through lengthy, in-depth analysis.
It doesn’t come easily or naturally to me to jump into the fray and take the risk of being provoked into that angry state that I so fear, but if it helps to get–or to keep–the dialogue going, it’s well worth the risk.
I assume that most people reading this know what’s going on in this episode, but just in case there are some other latecomers to the Fraggle party, I’ll give a brief synopsis: Gobo discovers the magical Grapes of Generosity, which are so delicious that he refuses to share them with his friends. As karmic retribution for his selfishness, Gobo becomes weightless as a result–because apparently Fraggle karma doesn’t follow any discernible logic.
The puppetry in this is quite impressive. If I get the chance, I’d like to ask Steve Whitmire how it was all done. I recognize a few effects, ChromaKey being the most obvious, and at one point it looks like they’re using a “throwable” Gobo, and towards the end, it sort of looks like Jerry was on a different, higher level from where Steve was on the floor. So I can kind of piece it together from what I can see, but it’s always interesting to get the real behind-the-scenes story.
This song is an example of what I was talking about earlier in the week, about the otherwise indecisive Wembley always sticking up for his friends. It’s interesting that when Wembley stops to think about what is the right thing to do, he gets bogged down by indecision, but when he reacts instinctively in defense of a friend, his instincts are always spot-on.
I envy him that. I have to put a little more thought into things.
For example, I have a personal policy of not feeding internet trolls. It’s tempting to fight back, and I’ve been known to succumb to the temptation, but since they feed off of attention, to fight back against them is only to make them stronger and hand them weapons. The only way to win is not to play.
But then, what to do when a friend is being harassed by a troll? I observed just such a situation earlier this week, and it posed a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, I had just got done talking about Wembley not standing by when someone is being bullied, and I felt it was incumbent upon me to follow Wembley’s example. On the other hand, feeding the troll could make things worse for everybody. Ultimately, I decided to ignore the troll completely but address a comment to my friend with words of support and encouragement.
As another example, what do you do when someone you care about has been accused of something awful?
There was a time in my life when I suspected one of my dearest friends of untoward behavior based on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. This is the first time I’ve ever been able to talk about it outside of a confessional. I can’t even go into detail about what happened; it’s just too embarrassing.
(Also, it requires too much exposition to be worth my time or yours.)
Suffice it to say, I was relieved when my friend turned out to be innocent, but I was wracked with guilt for having assumed the worst of him, especially for what turned out to be really no good reason at all.
Fortunately, I had the good sense to ask him about what happened instead of flying off the handle making baseless accusations, and I think I was successful in not letting on what I had been thinking about him–and, as far as I know, he still doesn’t know.
Nevertheless, I felt burdened by the knowledge that I had committed an act of betrayal against someone that I loved, even if it was only in the secret recesses of my innermost heart. I had no one to blame but my own foolishness and credulity; it was entirely my own fault. I never want to feel that way again. So I decided that, from that moment on, I would rather give someone that I care about the benefit of the doubt and risk being proven wrong than to automatically assume the worst.
Therefore, if somebody accuses someone whom I respect and admire of “unacceptable business conduct” or “brinksmanship,” etc., the burden of proof is on the accuser(s). If they want to convince me, they’d better be able (and willing) to produce some incontrovertible evidence.
I’ll check with Sam the Eagle but, as far as I know, in this country we’re all still innocent until proven guilty.
“They think me Macbeth; ambition is my folly.“ –Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda, lyricist)
It may seem like a bit of a strain to apply Hamilton lyrics to the Schism, but I use this particular passage to illustrate the unfortunate attitude of some in the Muppet community who have been unfairly characterizing Matt Vogel as some sort of undertalented, opportunistic usurper of the throne. I condemn this attitude out of hand; not only is it cruel and unfair to Matt, but it makes no sense: Matt has no more control over who does or doesn’t get hired than Steve does.
(Now that I think about it, you know what else doesn’t make any sense? My equating Matt with Alexander Hamilton. Steve is clearly Hamilton in this whole scenario. There’s not a comfortable analogue to Matt at all–at least, not as far as I can see. But I digress.)
Conversely, in other factions of the Muppet fan community, support for Steve Whitmire is sometimes being interpreted as disrespect toward Matt Vogel, and if one expresses the desire for Steve to go on performing Kermit, it is sometimes interpreted as a vote of no-confidence in Matt.
Let me state unequivocably that, as far as I am concerned, nothing could be further from the truth. I have complete confidence in Matt’s abilities and, more importantly, in his good intentions. In fact, I’ve felt a little sorry for him as all this has played out; Disney has put him in a terribly awkward position.
Though Matt has a fairly significant footprint on social media, he has not commented publicly upon the Schism one way or another–at least, not that I am aware of. Whether he has remained silent voluntarily or Disney has imposed a gag order on him, I don’t know. If it is his own choice to remain silent, I completely respect that. However, I don’t think he’ll be able to avoid it forever. Eventually, Kermit is going to have to start doing interviews again and, given journalists’ penchant for asking Muppets uncomfortable questions, sooner or later someone is going to ask Vogel!Kermit about Steve. What is he supposed to say?
Even looking at this from an executive’s point of view and considering it strictly as a personnel decision, by every objective measure, Steve is simply more qualified for the job of performing Kermit–not for performing in general, you understand, but specifically for performing Kermit—than Matt is. That is not to say that Matt is unqualified by any means; on the contrary, it is more to say that Matt’s time and talents would be better served elsewhere, like performing Jerry Nelson’s characters–in accordance with Jerry’s own wishes.
But just for the sake of argument, let’s think like an executive and take a look at the job description: Kermit is supposed to be able to talk about working with Jim Henson. Kermit is expected to be able to reminisce about working on The Muppet Show. On both counts–and through no fault of his own–Matt lacks the experience that Steve has in these areas.
Matt’s a qualified puppeteer. No one is disputing that. If it was a matter of necessity, I think he would be an excellent candidate to perform Kermit. But there’s the rub; it wasn’t necessary. Even if you take Disney’s vague rationale at face value, even if you genuinely believe that they were justified in dismissing Steve, the irrefutable fact is that they had a choice in the matter. For better or worse, they made their choice, and now they’re going to have to deal with the consequences, as all responsible adults must.
But I do feel sorry for Matt. I see him as a victim in all this too. As terrible as Steve’s situation is, at least he’s free now to speak his mind. On the other hand, Matt has been thrust into a situation over which he has no control and put on the frontlines in the charge to recreate the Muppets in Disney’s image. And I imagine that the circumstances of Steve’s dismissal must be hanging over Matt like the sword of Damocles: do a good job–play it the company way–or we’ll serve you the way we served Steve.
I support Steve and I will keep fighting for him, no matter what. I support Matt equally. If he does his best performing Kermit–and I have no doubt that he will–I will be grateful to him, just as I have been grateful to Steve for all these years.
Lately I’ve found myself with not so much a writer’s block but with sort of a writer’s log jam. There are so many things that I want to say; it’s all sort of jamming together in my brain, all trying to get out at the same time. I’m just trying to prioritize and try to figure out what is most important. Also, some of the stuff has to go in a particular order or it won’t make sense. So I’m just kind of trying to sort out the chaos in my head.
To further complicate matters, my life outside my head is also about to get kind of chaotic for a while. I’m starting a new job next week, and also my parents are coming this Friday for a “surprise” visit, and I kind of need to make the place presentable for them. (At the very least, I need to set up the bed where they’re going to sleep.) So if my posts get sporadic over the next couple of weeks, that’s why.
But I want to take a moment and revisit an idea that I talked about last Wednesday and Thursday, about the wish that I’d had in 2012 that I could go back in time to reassure my grieving ten-year-old self that the Muppets would go on without Jim Henson, and Kermit would still be Kermit, and everything would be fine. Looking back on that wish from five years in the future, it seems horribly ironic.
And yet, I do still kind of want to go back in time and talk to my ten-year-old self. I don’t want to tell her–or me…maybe “me/her”–about the Schism; I remember the anxiety I/she felt back then when Jim Henson died, and I wouldn’t want to add to my/her anxiety by burdening me/her with troubles that I/she can’t to anything about.
(You know what? This is getting too confusing with all the “me/her” stuff. I’m just going to use “her” to refer to my ten-year-old self, and you’re just going to have to figure it out as we go along.)
But I would like to tell her about how I connected with Steve Whitmire last week. That would be difficult to do–quite apart from trying to avoid the Schism, I’d have to explain to her what the Internet is. I think I’d just say to her, “I can promise you that someday you will talk to Kermit the Frog, but it won’t be in a way that you might expect.”
That experience was really meaningful to me. I love all the Muppets, but I’ve always considered a special few–specifically Kermit, Bert and Ernie–to be friends that I could turn to for comfort in times of trouble.
And I’ve seen troubles; I had a terrible time as a teaching assistant in grad school, and then after that, I had a job for four years that made my teaching assistantship seem like a picnic. I can’t go into a lot of details there, but suffice it to say that I was in a very vulnerable position and, despite the best efforts of management, I endured a lot of verbal abuse that tore me down to the foundation of my being. It completely destroyed my sense of self. While working through the trauma of that experience, watching Steve’s work with the Muppets (pre- and post-1990) helped me to heal and to rebuild my self-concept.
It goes without saying that Steve went through a trauma back in October, and although I can’t say from first-hand experience, I imagine that being summarily dismissed from a job that one loves–not just a job, but a vocation–after nearly 40 years would be a major blow to one’s self-image. In any case, the pain that Steve feels is palpable when he writes about it on his blog. I’ve tried to make comments of support and appreciation on every post, with the hope that he will read them and smile, that they’ll help him to feel even just a tiny bit better, but not necessarily expecting him to acknowledge them in any way. You could think of it as being like Johnny Appleseed; I planted the seeds in the hopes that they would grow, but without knowing whether I’d get to see any of them bear fruit.
So it was both very gratifying and very humbling when he quoted a comment I had made and said, “This post made my day!” To know that I made a tiny difference in his life, even if it’s just momentary…to be able to ease his pain even just slightly…to be able to pay back the smallest portion of the joy and comfort that he’s given me over the years…that’s a treasure that I will carry with me forever…and one that I really want to share.
“I don’t think you’re a bad man, Doc. But I think if you look in your heart, you’ll find you really want to let me and my friends go, to follow our dream. But if that’s not the kind of man you are, and what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense to you, well then…go ahead and kill me.”–Kermit the Frog, The Muppet Movie (1979)
There was a documentary on Jim Henson that was made in 1999, and in the middle of writing my previous post, I suddenly remembered that I had a segment of it tucked away in a playlist on YouTube wherein Steve talks a little about what happened when he first took up the mantle of performing Kermit. So I looked it up just now because I thought it might be helpful to me. And because I hadn’t seen it in several years, I kept watching it after the bit with Steve was over, and heard Frank Oz say that Steve “had to get in the soul of Jim to be Kermit.”
At that moment, I had an epiphany. All this time, I’ve been angry and sad and upset about how Disney has been treating Steve. Suddenly, the true horror of this situation finally hit me; it’s not just that Disney has mistreated Steve, it’s that they’ve mistreated Kermit.
The puppeteer is the soul of the character; I knew that before, but I hadn’t fully realized all the implications of it. You can’t just take away someone’s soul. You can’t fire someone’s soul; you can’t replace someone’s soul; you can’t audition for a new soul. What Disney has done to Kermit–to Kermit–is an act of violation, comparable to the Dementor’s Kiss; or, to use an example from within the Jim Henson universe, analogous with the splitting of the urSkeks in The Dark Crystal.
When viewed in that light, how could anyone greet the recasting news with indifference or unconcern, with cautious optimism–or even, as some are doing, with enthusiastic anticipation? How could anyone be resigned to this unspeakable act of violence against our beloved frog? Steve has gotten a lot of flak for speaking out about it on his blog. I’ve felt that that was unfair all along, but having had this epiphany, I don’t see how any reasonable person could expect him to stay silent; how can anyone who claims to love the Muppets stand silently by and watch as our lifelong friend, Kermit the Frog, is being eviscerated?
Of course, Disney owns the rights to the characters, so they are at liberty to cast whomever they want in whatever role. And I imagine that their rationale was that, since Muppet characters have been recast before, it wouldn’t make much difference. There’s no denying that characters have been successfully recast before; it is inevitable in a “franchise” (how I hate that word!) that’s over 60 years old, and if the characters are to survive in perpetuity, all of them will eventually have to be recast.
Nevertheless, there’s a difference: in the past, the recasts happened in an organic way. It happened out of necessity, and the main performers were allowed to have a say in who would be their replacement.
This is completely different. It’s arbitrary, cynical, and self-serving. But most of all, it’s unnecessarily cruel.
Yesterday I posted an edited version of an essay I wrote in 2012 about what Jim Henson means to me. It was interesting, and a little poignant, to revisit a piece of writing like that, five years after the fact. I revised it before publishing it again: some things were no longer relevant, some of the points seemed extraneous, and some of the writing seemed inelegant.
But I cut out the part about the immediate aftermath of Jim Henson’s death, when Kermit’s–and all the Muppets’–fate hung in the balance, and how it all turned out all right because Steve Whitmire was there to step up and perform Kermit. While I wanted to keep that praise of Steve in there, ultimately I left the whole paragraph out because, in the aftermath of the Schism, it was just too painful to revisit. It was still a raw wound.
Or so I decided last night. I woke up at 5:00 this morning with the sudden realization that one of my stated purposes in starting this blog was to show my support for Steve, but by cutting out that paragraph wherein I praised him, I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. If Disney were paying attention, they could probably twist that so that it would cast a doubtful light on my sincerity.
Sometimes, in order to diagnose and treat an injury, you have to poke at the tender spots. In order to show my support for Steve, I need to be willing to examine those raw emotions. So here goes.
Here’s the paragraph in question from my original essay, unedited. This is exactly what I wrote in 2012:
“At the time, I wasn’t sure which was the worst-case scenario: a world without Kermit, or a Kermit who wasn’t “really” Kermit. I remember that, more than anything, two questions dominated my thoughts as I tried to comprehend this tragedy: would someone else take over performing Kermit? And if so, would it be the same Kermit I knew and loved? I sometimes wish that there was a way that I could go back in time and reassure my nearly-ten-year-old self that the answer to both questions was “yes,” thanks to the superlative Steve Whitmire, for whom I have nothing but the utmost respect.”
“Superlative” is the highest compliment that I can give. The word “superlative” can be used not only be used to modify nouns, it also modifies other adjectives, denoting “the highest degree of comparison.” When I say that someone or something is “superlative,” it means that I’ve weighed many other adjectives and found them all insufficient to express my enthusiasm or highest regard.
I’ve always had the utmost respect for Steve Whitmire. Even when things were a little rough with him performing Kermit at the beginning, I appreciated that he was doing his best to keep Kermit alive. Later on, I found out from interviews how difficult it was for him to take up the responsibility and what it took for him to get to that point, and it increased my appreciation and gratitude exponentially.
At the time that Jim Henson died, when I was somewhere between the ages of nine and ten, I was preoccupied with figuring out what was “real,” and I had very rigid views about what was “real” and what was not when it came to books and movies and stuff. Take, for example, The Little Mermaid: prior to the animated movie, I was familiar with the original story by Hans Christian Andersen. And I hated it because it was so sad. The animated version provided the happy ending that I so desired. So, which was the “real” version? Was the original story “real” because it came first, or was the animated movie “real” because it had a more satisfying ending? I spent a lot of time contemplating questions like that. It seemed vitally important to me to firmly establish which version was “real” and which was not.
(Ironically enough, now that I’m an adult, Hans Christian Andersen’s original version of The Little Mermaid has a lot more resonance for me. But that’s a whole other story.)
Eventually, of course, I grew up; I matured, I went to college, I started studying literature, and I developed a much more fluid notion of what was “real,” and I began to be able to accept the notion that multiple versions of a given thing could be “real.” As another example, take Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The first version of A Christmas Carol that I ever saw was–I’m sorry to have to say–the Disney version, entitled “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.” For better or worse, it informed my concept of what A Christmas Carol was supposed to be. While it’s reasonably faithful to the original story, it doesn’t lift the original text straight out of the story. It takes a much lighter approach than most versions, and there are elements of parody and humor. When I was older and saw other, different productions of the same story, I was shocked and disturbed by how dark and scary and humorless they were.
When The Muppet Christmas Carol came out, I expected it–alas–to be closer to “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” in tone. Actually, what I was really expecting was the “Monsterpiece Theater” version of A Christmas Carol, heavy on parody and silliness. But while it did have a somewhat lighter touch than some versions, ultimately Muppet Christmas Carol is more or less a straight adaptation of the original story. This is not a criticism, I hasten to add; merely an observation. It’s not that I don’t like Muppet Christmas Carol or think that it is bad; it’s just to say that it is different from what I expected.
But my point is that, unavoidably, I’ve seen so many versions of A Christmas Carol that I gave up trying to decide which is the “real” version. I can appreciate now that, so long as the story is recognizable, and the characters are consistent, there can be multiple “real” versions, and I can appreciate each of them for the good that they have to offer.
But I’m realizing more and more–not only in regard to the Muppets, but any time you’re trying to tell a story–that consistency of character is key. An audience will forgive a lot of faults if the characters are acting in a way that is believable and consistent, but if not, it doesn’t matter if all the other story elements are in place and firing on all cylinders; if the characters aren’t consistent, the audience generally isn’t going to buy it. That’s why the “Han shot first” issue is so hotly debated in the Star Wars fandom. That’s the moment that tells us who Han Solo is: that he’s pragmatic, morally ambiguous, and not afraid to use violent means in the cause of self-preservation. And yes, he grows beyond that over the course of the series, but that’s the foundation on which he is built. Take away the foundation, and the whole structure collapes.
My point is that, when Steve took over from Jim, Kermit wasn’t immediately polished and perfect, but he was still real. He was still consistent with what we knew him to be, so we were able to forgive a lot and be patient and trust that Kermit was going to come back into his own and continue to grow and evolve and build up from the foundation that was laid by Jim.
Kermit himself actually addressed the issue very beautifully in an interview in 2011. When asked how he “gauged success,” Kermit answered, “I just try to be myself and stay myself and […] grow and evolve with the times, but stay based on who I am […] Not change, just grow.”
(I invite you to watch the whole interview, below. It is both candid and charming; a beautiful example of what I said elsewhere about Jim Henson giving the whole world license to make believe through his creations.)
Frog of La Mancha 